“We may delude ourselves, but that’s hardly the point. We must give voice to the irrational as an act of conscience. It’s the closest thing we have to prayer.” - from 'The Siren of Montmartre' by Leopold Nacht

Friday, April 22, 2016

We were in a bit of a quandary, needing a title for our
group. Someone suggested Sunbeams – as there were more
than one of us and a plural word seemed
appropriate. It was also a nod towards the bright
young things in our group.

Someone else
suggested Starlight with its glow of wide-spread amorphousness, a singular thing
even though it was generated by a myriad tiny prickles in the night sky creating
together such a soft effulgence that represented as well as filled our communal
soul. On the other hand, Sunbeams would have indicated separateness and a
strength greater than Starlight, even if sometimes they merged as a sum of Sunbeams to make one huge spotlight at the end
of several plaited shafts -
as if inside a cathedral picking out an island of
light on the ground around the
altar.

For the dark ones among us in the group, Starlight
barely suffused, while Sunbeams lifted others out of
their own darkness, thus to become strong and separate luminaries. But
then one bright spark suddenly had an idea. Our group title didn't need to
be either/or. We could be represented by both Sunbeams and
Starlight. That pleased most of us, whether we had
either felt we were dark merging souls drifting like tangled wormholes or become
discrete pixels of existence that played in the air of the meadow like invisible fireflies on a summer's day. Bright young
things, most of us, though.

Soon, however,
some of us older ones took exception to this something-and-something form of title. We were set in our
ways and we wanted to continue pitching Sunbeams against Starlight. Competitive
to the end. I glimpsed
over to my old friend
Lucifer whose eyes shone with a laser force, twirling
and twisting as blades fencing with elements of tunnel vision. And it was then
that it dawned on us that we
needed someone from outside the group as a moderator to settle the
matter.Sunbeams or Starlight or Sunbeams-and-Starlight
were in
fact three choices, thus implying a third
eye in each of our heads to join the other two as
spiritual torches to help us negotiate the Nirvana for which our whole group, at heart, yearned as a counterintuitive
impulse.

You pointed to the title you had given us at
the start. SUNBEAMS AND STARLIGHT, it said, and it was underlined, as if it was
incontrovertible, imbued with eternity, indelible as the co-incidence of light that threaded through us all, whether
old or young. There was thus
no point to this story, no point to our tussle with titles. It had been
writ all along by
the moving finger of light. A fate in hindsight, even
if started by free will.

Laughter, as we each eked out an
ungenerous moment of yearning, to feel your teasing finger of ignition
within our nether darkness.
The pointillism of
life.